Tag Archives: american beer

Seattle Beer Culture

I was in Seattle this past weekend for yet another stag.  I am always impressed by the beer selection that almost everywhere in Seattle seems to have.  We did actively seek out some fine purveyors of beer, but we also visited a few places we were surprised to find had an excellent selection of craft beer.  And yet even some among our group of Canadians held onto the notion that Canadian beer is superior to American, a notion I’ve refuted as a myth on this blog.  I hope that Vancouver can one day match the availability, not to mention affordability, of excellent craft beer that we came across in Seattle.

On Friday we began our weekend with a few pints in the Pyramid Brewing beer garden across from Safeco Field.  The beer garden was packed full of the Mariners pregame crowd and provided a very festive atmosphere.  Pyramid had five beers for sale in the beer garden, including an amber, a blonde, an IPA, a hefeweizen, and their famous apricot ale.  I thoroughly enjoyed the beer garden at Pyramid, an experience enhanced by my soon to be married friend dressed in a beaver suit.  If only the Mariners game could have measured up to the pregame.  This was my first live baseball game and I found it even more boring than baseball on TV.  I may have loudly expressed my opinion to anyone nearby, and for that I apologize.  The few too many pints at Pyramid beforehand may have contributed to my rudeness.  The best part of the Mariners game was the members of the crowd who stopped by to gawk at my poor friend the bachelor.  Seriously though, if you’ve ever seen hockey, how can you like baseball?  Anyway, I was very impressed by the beer selection at Safeco, which is funny because this Washington beer blogger doesn’t share my opinion.  He’d be sorely disappointed with the beer on offer at GM Place.

After the game, or maybe before the game ended, we went to a bar called Cowgirls, which is a wonderful place to a take a bachelor.  Think Coyote Ugly with better looking staff.  After Cowgirls, we bypassed the next morning and headed straight out for lunch a little worse for wear.  We found a pub called the Fox Sports Grill right beside our hotel.  By the way, we stayed at the Sheraton in downtown Seattle for a mere $94 a night thanks to Hotwire.com.  The Fox had twenty odd craft beers on tap and also afforded me my first crack at an undercooked burger.  In Canada, burgers must be cooked well done, whereas I was able to enjoy my burger cooked medium.  It is official, burgers cooked less than well done are delicious.  We are too paranoid up here.

After lunch, we headed to West Seattle Golf Course for a round.  Being a public facility, the course was very affordable, but also very crowded.  How do you spice up a six hour round?  You try to run over your buddies golf balls with your cart, accidentally flipping it with yourself still inside.  That hurt.  And no, I was not inebriated from consuming some of the excellent beers for sale at the course.  I am just stupid.  Even public golf courses in Seattle have solid beer selections.  I’m starting to get bitter here.

For dinner we headed to the Taphouse and Grill, also very near to our hotel. The Taphouse has 160 taps of interesting beer with samplers of four available for $9.50.  This place was heaven for me and I wish I could have spent a lot of time at the bar, but maybe another time.  I didn’t even know how you could fit 160 taps into an establishment, but they had them all in there, wall to wall and staggered at two levels.  I tried to take a picture, but my crappy iPhone camera failed me in the dim light.  When you consider that our top beer bar, the Alibi Room, has only 19 taps, it puts 160 taps into perspective.  Wow.  That evening took us too a few more bars and pubs, none of particular interest to beer enthusiasts.  The last day, we headed straight for lunch again, this time stopping at the Pike Brewing Brewpub, another fine establishment.

It was another succesful stag, one where we enjoyed far too much excellent beer.  Seattle really is a great beer destination.  I can only hope to say the same about Vancouver in a few years.

Cheers,

Chris

Canadian vs American beer, whose is best?

I have sincerely believed for the bulk of my life that Canadian beer is better than American beer.  I have no idea why I thought this even as a child, but this sentiment remains pervasive amongst Canadian youth.  Why was I so compelled to consider Canadian beer superior and which nation’s beer really is best?

My first inclination was that I was severely affected by the brilliant Molson “I am Canadian” TV commercials, which had a substantial impact on my generation in our formative years.  Molson’s latest series still gets me going, considering I do feel bad putting my seat back on an airplane!  What Americans might not understand is just how applicable these ads are to the average Canadian.  I have also lit a hockey stick on fire trying to bend it (even though I don’t even play hockey), turned down the company of attractive females for the NHL playoffs, been asked by an American if I lived in an igloo, and also asked if I knew Joe from Toronto.  Seriously. Silly as it may be, these nationalistic commercials that have not much to do with actual beer probably helped solidify in my mind the superiority of Canadian beer.  When I consider that they used to sponsor Hockey Night in Canada, of which changing the theme song was a national issue, I realize that I likely have Molson to thank for my assumptions.

Researching the subject of Canadian versus American beer online, I stumbled across numerous forums accusing American beer of being watery.  The basis for such arguments were generally that American beer contains less alcohol than Canadian beer.  Considering that alcohol content is not paramount to quality or taste and that it should vary depending on beer style, I’d say the alcohol content argument is a bit ridiculous.  Further investigation yields that Canadians measure alcohol by volume and Americans measure alcohol by weight.  Alcohol weighs less than water, which means that, even though the percentages on the packaging read higher in Canada, similar American and Canadian beers contain the same amount of alcohol.  However, I will contend that whatever beer I bought the last time I was at Quest Field in Seattle was a horrible, watery, waste of $10USD.

Reading up on the mainstream brewing industry in Canada, it seems that all the big, storied Canadians breweries have recently come under foreign ownership.  Molson, founded in 1786 and the oldest beer brand in North America, is now owned by Coors. Labatt, founded in 1847, is now owned by InBev.  And Sleeman, founded in 1834, is now owned by Sapporo.  This leaves Moosehead as the largest Canadian owned brewer withonly own 5% of the Canadian beer consumption market.  What I consider an even bigger tradegy than the foreign ownership of our big breweries, is that the majority of the population drinks the favlorless, uninteresting, substandard beer these guys are putting out there.

When it comes to making a choice, I’d probably go for a Molson Canadian or Labatt Blue over a Coors Light, Budweiser, or Miller Genuine Draft, but the truth of the matter is that I’d rather not drink any of them.  I’d prefer to drink a microbrewed beer, Canadian or American, made by people who care, over any of the macobrewed stuff.  Microbrewing is thriving in Canada and the USA and their are plenty of great Canadian and American microbrewed beers available that are consistently of higher quality.  And when I say quality, I am referring to taste, natural ingredients, and pure brewing processes, not price.  Proponents of price as a factor in buying beer have it all wrong.  Sure, a 24 pack of Canadian or Bud might be the cheapest way to drink beer, but it’s not all about volume.  One beer should fill you up; it’s what it was invented for! Give me a few large bottles of quality microbrewed stuff over a 24 pack anyday.  Really, please give them to me.

My honest opinion these days is that neither Canadian nor American beer is better or worse.  Both countries produce great, poor, and everything in between beer.  I do think that America produces ten times as much bad beer as we do, though they also produce ten times as much good beer, mostly because they have ten times the population.  I surely count American breweries among my favorites, including Anchor and Rogue to name two whose products are readily available in these parts.  It’s a tragedy that BC is bereft of more of the great stuff coming out of the American Pacific Northwest. Likewise, I feel like Americans are missing out on some of the great stuff we produce up here, Philips is one example.  For some info on good American beers, check out this Toronto Star article.

I really believe that the best beer can be found locally, in the USA and in Canada.  There is likely somebody in your neighborhood making really good beer that could use your support.  The pride I felt watching the “I am Canadian” commercials as a kid I hope I can feel again supporting my local beer community. In my view, it’s the only way back.

Cheers,

Chris